Transcription
[https://buzztour.org/documentary/]{.ul}
[Rob and Eve laughing]
Eve: So you were doing your talk on The Meditator as Revolutionary, and I listened to that. I found it really spoke to me, because I see a connection between people's behaviour and their mindset and how they approach climate change. What's the sort of possible connection there that you've been exploring?
Rob: [laughs] That wasn't quite what I thought you were going to ask!
Eve: Okay! No, that's fine. Answer what you ...
Rob: Well, I think what we were talking about before was, you were asking about -- what you're interested in, and what's so beautiful about what you're doing, is looking at what's already existing in our culture, what's emerging in our culture, and sort of little seeds beginning to sprout here and there that look as if they're not connected, and actually beginning to draw them into connection with each other, and put people in contact, and see what comes together. Then one element in that, one little sprout, is meditative culture, and the mindfulness movement, and broader than the mindfulness movement. How can that support a different interaction, a different perspective, and a different response to the climate emergency? Is that right?
Eve: Mm!
Rob: So I think, I mean, broadly speaking, I'd probably put it -- let's say one of the things, learning meditation or deepening meditation, developing meditation might do is it gives us, what we might say, skill with our emotional life and skill with our mental life. We can expand the heart's capacity. Some of what's happening, a lot of what's happening in the world, to our planet and to actually the structures of civilization, is so painful, I wonder if a lot of people actually disconnect from that. We're living lives of disconnection. A lot of the thrust of meditation, certainly meditation that's based on mindfulness, is about reconnection.
When we reconnect, unfortunately, part of what we're reconnecting to is a lot of pain. It's more in the face. So if I'm going to reconnect, if I'm interested in reconnecting, I have to have a way of tolerating that pain, but in a way that's not numbing. Something in me needs to grow to be able to hold it, to bear it, to resonate without sinking or collapsing or capsizing or going into despair. So that's a big ask of the heart, and to me, that's a big part of what developed meditative training can offer, is that people can learn, over time, to really handle not just their personal emotions but the emotions of the earth, the emotions that are something bigger than the human, that we're in touch with now because we know what's going on. That, to me, is a big part of it, that we learn that capacity that enables us to open to what's going on, to look it in the eye, to meet it, and then, from a more balanced perspective, because we're in touch and open and connected, now what can I do about it?
Eve: Yeah.
Rob: So that's one.
Eve: Thank you.
Rob: Should I say more?
Eve: Yeah. Well, the other aspect that I was really curious about was DANCE.
Rob: I haven't finished yet! Do you want me to ... [Rob and Eve laugh]
Eve: That's okay.
Rob: Is it too much?
Eve: No, it's fine!
Rob: Are you sure? You wanted just a minute, right?
Eve: That's okay.
Rob: We'll make it much shorter. Or it's up to you.
Eve: [laughs] If there are more things that you think would be good to say, then do!
Rob: But maybe I'm being too long-winded.
Eve: [laughs] Carry on!
Rob: No? Well, the second bit ... [Rob and Eve laugh] ... has to do with resource. The other piece that I think, again, is possible through meditative training is inner resource. It's like a cultivation of a wellspring of well-being and resource that actually most of us, unfortunately, don't have access to. So that, because we don't have access to that, means I need to buy this and I need to buy that. I need to be kind of addicted to a consumerist mechanism and culture and lifestyle. I need to go on holiday here, or I think I need to, in order to feel replenished, to feel nourished enough to meet the demands of a modern lifestyle.
So one of the things that, again, with training, that meditation might offer, or practice might offer, is just developing enough resource that I actually don't need to do this, and I realize that I don't need to. I put less pressure on myself, my finances, the planet, the resources of the planet, just because I have enough inside me.
Eve: Yeah, absolutely!
Rob: The third thing has to do -- and this is maybe a little bit more nebulous or more open -- has to do, I think, with a sense of the sacred. Now, I mean that in the broadest possible terms. There are many kinds of sacredness. If I say, "What's behind the current environmental crises? What's behind, what's driving climate change?", you could look at a lot of factors -- economic or this or that. But underneath all of that is a sense that the earth is just a commodity. It's just matter, inert matter, and people also become commodities. They're cogs in an economic machine. Despite the rhetoric of humanism, we don't value human beings deeply enough, and we don't value the earth and nature deeply enough. So there's something that any kind of spiritual practice might offer that supports an opening, a deepening into a sense of the sacred, and from that, then, once that's there, it becomes almost impossible, or hard, to violate the earth or violate other people.
Now, what that sacredness looks like, or the forms or the directions or flavours it takes, could be so different, you know? You get very secular forms of meditation, like the whole mindfulness movement. But still, within that, there are the glimmerings of something that's sacred, or possible there. And you get very different forms. For me, it's all good, but what matters is that there's sacredness. That seems so utterly fundamental to facing our problems, that somehow, in a modernist and postmodernist society, we find a way back or in, or a new way in, to the sacred, to sacredness. Absolutely crucial.
Eve: Mm. If there are more things that you want to explain to people, I would love for you to do that! [laughs] Those three areas, as you said, are so key.
Rob: They're big, yeah. I mean, do you have specific questions about anything that I said? Or a bit more that feels like it needs a bit more explanation?
Eve: Because this is, like, the introductory level -- so someone who has not really thought about ...
Rob: ... meditation at all?
Eve: And not really considered how meditation could possibly link with climate change.
Rob: Okay.
Eve: But you've done those processes, by saying, you know, once you've got that respect, and you've got the view of the sacred, you are starting to protect it. You've got the inner resources, which means you don't crave things which are destructive. You've got those threads. And then in terms of the actual action and the practice, for me, part of it is almost like forming willpower and forming skills. Like when I talked to Paula [camerawoman] about building muscles and those kind of things, the action of practising shows you what you can do. And then more things are possible. Like, "Oh, I managed to sit and meditate for half an hour," and you controlled yourself, and you controlled your mind. And that then leads to more and more things. I feel that's a skill that we're missing. We're encouraged to have the quick gratification.
Rob: Sure, sure.
Eve: And the key thing for me is looking at long-term benefit versus short-term gain. Too often, we go for short-term gain at the expense of long-term benefit to our society, our culture, our grandchildren. I feel like meditation balances people and just makes them pause. They don't crave that immediate satisfaction at the expense of later.
Rob: Yeah.
Eve: I know hardly anything about meditation, and yet, everything that I've seen of it has been so valuable and so important to changing people's behaviour.
Rob: Yeah! ... Is there a question?
Eve: I don't know.
Rob: It doesn't matter! Okay. Before, I thought you were saying, "Oh, it would be good if there was a bit more explanation." But you weren't saying that.
Eve: No, absolutely! Go for it.
Rob: Well, I don't know. It just felt like ... well, maybe Paula has an idea of what ... [Rob and Paula laugh] For someone who doesn't know anything, I don't know ... what one needs.
Paula: I would say even the simple things, like when you open up a tin, and you tip the tomatoes out into the [?], and then you just throw the can in the bin -- I think mindfulness helps to become more aware of what it is you're actually doing. So you look at that tin, and you look at the bin, and you look at all the other tins in the bin, and you're just like, "Why am I throwing this away? Where is this going to go?" And you become a lot more aware of how your everyday actions affect the planet. Where is that going, and why are you putting it in the bin and not recycling? Are you really that lazy that you can't wash it out, put it in the recycling? You become much more aware of these small, everyday actions. I think that's a sort of small, tangible connection that you can make between becoming more mindful and caring more for the planet, because you're more aware of the impact that the small actions have.
Rob: Yeah. When there's more mindfulness, we're much more aware of what's in our surroundings. It's impacting us more. And we're also much more sensitive and aware of inner movements. As you say, why am I doing this? Is it just out of some quick-fix mentality, that I'm not even aware of, and it's prompting me to do something that's maybe not, in the long run, really helpful? All that, those kind of mechanisms, we're much more aware of, and much more able to stand back from and exercise a choice, rather than just being driven by mental mechanisms that we're not even conscious of. So it gives us a consciousness and a space to exercise a choice, which ends up being a kind of moral choice, a choice that can be related to sacredness as opposed to just kind of machination, being driven.
Eve: Yeah. I think a key thing for me is observing, because no matter what we see, our brains and our world-view blind us to all the things that are there, and every day, I can see the same things, but I'm not seeing it, and I'm not understanding the connection. I feel like when people meditate, they try to observe and to step back from that, and that that can translate into the rest of their lives and how they view the actions of people around them and the events that are unfolding every day. You can watch the news, and the most dramatic Armageddon is described, and yet, nobody reacts. Nobody shouts. Nobody does anything. That's a weird thing to observe! Something is clearly strange.
Rob: Yeah. We've become numb and overloaded, and numbed through overloading. I think that's part of it.
Eve: I'd like to know a little bit about DANCE, if you can tell us a bit about what you've been doing with that.
Rob: Sure. Well, there are two parts to that. One is what it actually does and what it's set up to do, and the other is, at least for my part -- and I'm just a small part behind it, but why I was interested in setting that up. Maybe I'll start with that first, because having said what we just said about meditation and the connections with climate engagement or possible connections, having been involved in that world for so many years, sometimes what I saw was rather the opposite of what we were just talking about (not always, but quite a lot -- enough to be a bit of a concern). When a person practises or meditates, it's not just the mindfulness; there's also a certain ethos behind it. There's a certain ideology and a certain image behind it. Very often, the image of the meditator is as someone who's somewhat removed and not so bothered by what's going on in the world. There's a kind of equanimity, balance, sort of 'un-rocked'-ness by what's happening. Of course equanimity's important, balance is important, but sometimes the image kind of trumps any impulse for engagement. With Buddhism, it's a bit of a shadow that people are not so engaged because all the focus is on insight and on this kind of image of somewhat aloof sort of equanimity, if that makes sense. Does that make sense?
Eve: Yeah!
Rob: So I think, unwittingly, people absorb a kind of image from a certain culture (in this case, Buddhist meditative culture), that in some ways is very beautiful, very helpful, but has a kind of shadow side, has a kind of blind spot, particularly in relation to things like engagement. That was quite interesting to me. It's like, why is that happening? Despite everything we said five minutes ago -- that mindfulness brings awareness, and it brings capacity, and sensitivity, and resource, and sacredness -- there's this withholding from engagement, or even awareness of what to engage with, or just not so much interest. That has been really, really interesting to me. It's a potential kind of blind spot, shadow.
And sometimes I partly feel that has to do with the image, the sort of subliminal image of what is communicated for what meditation leads to: it leads to calm, a sort of 'not bothered'-ness, unruffledness, and actually disengagement. If you compare that with, say, the image of Jesus, who's in the temple and kicking over the stalls of the moneylenders, it's very active. We don't so much have that in Buddhism. The image of the Buddha was a very removed image. So partly a question, or what I was interested in is, is it possible to bring in different images to the meditative scene and the Buddhist world that give people different avenues, different ways of expressing engagement, that's not locked into one image that's actually of non-engagement? Is it possible to be passionate and loud, and vociferous and critical, and even angry in a certain kind of way, and a meditator? And somehow balancing that. There's a line there. There's a dance to tread there. Does it always look one way? And is there a place for lots of different kind of personalities and colours and energies and flavours, archetypes of activism and of contemplation? There's a whole range there.
Eve: It's a key thing that I've wondered -- it's the enforcement aspect, when you clearly see that someone is doing something harmful -- for example, the fossil fuel industry; they ceased to be of benefit to our society quite a long time ago, and they've become harmful, but we don't enforce. Can you, and compassionately, can you enforce to say, "You're hurting yourself. You're hurting others. I'm not going to let you do that"? Can you engage, but with compassion, in a way that you're maintaining your balance, but you are potentially very active and very engaged? That's a key balance for me. A lot of us are frightened of power. We don't want to use whatever form of power, whether it's money, whether it's influence, whether it's politics. For me, the Buddha was a very powerful individual in his wisdom and a lot of things, and it feels like if you see someone hurting themselves and hurting others, you have a duty to not let them be the bad guy, to not let them keep doing that. Being passive about it, you're not helping them, and you're certainly not helping the people that bear their harming.
Rob: Yeah. Yeah, beautiful. In what you just said, there are three words. Duty -- to me, it's like, what is our duty? And again, to me, that's connected with a sense of sacredness as well. What's my duty as a human being? I have so many gifts as a human. You have so many gifts -- just the fact of life, and this intelligence, and our perceptual capacity. What's my duty to this and this miraculous planet, and the rest of civilization, and all the fruits of civilization which I enjoy and make use of? What's my duty to that? To me, that's a deep question, you know. It's a deep thing that one engages with.
And passivity -- it relates to what I said before. You used that word. It's like there's a tendency for some contemplative disciplines, and the ethos that surrounds them, to be one of passivity. And just questioning: does that need to be the case, or can I actually have times of passivity and times of really active engagement? This is where, to me, it also gets interesting, because of the other word you used, 'balance.' I think people who are very involved in activism, sometimes they would be very thankful for a meditative discipline. It would give them a little balance, a little spaciousness, a little ease when they're engaging. Sometimes, though, it might be that someone ... or rather, do I need to be in balance all the time? Maybe it's okay to be out of balance. Now, that's a tricky one, because a lot of people feel off-balance a lot of the time, and if you're an activist, you might feel just burnt out. But maybe if I have a meditative discipline, I can afford to be off-balance sometimes, because I know that I can regain my balance. Then I don't have this image of needing to be in balance all the time. It's okay to be a little crazy. Maybe it's good to be a little crazy. Maybe being a little crazy is an appropriate response to what's going on right now. [Rob looks at Paula reacting, and laughs]
Eve: This is the thing, isn't it? Is it an appropriate response? And looking at -- if you see someone beating a child in front of you, an appropriate response is not to say, "Maybe could you not do that?" You have to protect both the person who is turning themselves into the bad guy, and that child. I think the thing for me to maintain is not so much balance as perspective, a viewpoint, that you haven't lost yourself into that situation; you've maintained an outer perspective. You're aware of that person who is the perpetrator. And you haven't lost yourself to rage, I guess.
Rob: Yeah. And that's where the awareness comes in, that there is, with mindfulness practice and even beyond mindfulness practice, there's a capacity to be aware of rage, and sometimes even use it creatively, with enough kind of skill, but you're not a victim of rage. You're not taken over by rage. It becomes part of what's going on, and something to be aware of, to respond to, depending on the circumstance.
Eve: This is the thing -- the things that make us change and make us act are our emotions. If I think of the things that have compelled me, it was never a very dry lecture; it's an emotional reaction that drove me forwards. But I would never want my emotions to blind me, or to lead me to an inappropriate response.
So how did DANCE form?
Rob: Like I said, I was interested in this question, I had been interested in this question for quite a while, about why isn't there such a force of engagement and so many currents of engagement within the sort of Buddhist community or the mindfulness world? Why is there a seeming mismatch to what you would think would add up? So I was kind of interested in that, and was talking at different places about it, and just after some of those talks, realized actually a lot of people wanted avenues to do that, wanted to bring the two together, but just didn't know how. So it was really, with a group of friends and colleagues, just set up something that would be a forum and a platform for people to bring whatever they brought. The idea was everyone could be creative; it wasn't top-down. It was really, anyone can bring whatever. And the whole range of, as I said, personalities, styles, directions, inclinations, moods, colours of what might be involved in active engagement that has perhaps a more spiritual dimension can be brought in, and everyone can plug into what they want to -- which is similar to what you were saying earlier as well. It's ongoing, and I hope it will just open up more and more, as I said, just platforms, arenas, and forums where people can share ideas and actions and perspectives, all kinds of things. [end]
